All Forum Posts by: Susan M.

Never thought of doing that actually, but a great idea.  Right now checks/payments come to us in our personal names.

We're using "Cash" from Square.  

https://cash.me/

You are going to get a lot of opinions on this I bet, so I will add mine to the list.

We almost always have long turnarounds.  At least a month of vacancy where we repaint, do repairs, upgrades, etc.  But generally we have people lined up to occupy as soon as we're done with that process, which means holding a property for someone 20-30 days, sometimes more.  It works for us although others would never do business this way.

Since we're generally holding properties, we collect a non-refundable hold fee and have them sign a hold agreement as soon as they are approved.  For example, we're doing one tomorrow for tenants who cannot move in until July 15th.  They're going to pay us one full month's rent as a non-refundable hold fee in exchange for us removing all advertising for the property (turning away other potential renters).  The agreement says that if they back out for any reason we keep the full fee as damages.  If we back out, we return their money.  We only do month-to-month leases so we could probably have them sign the lease instead of the hold fee agreement but we feel the hold fee agreement is more clear to everyone exactly what happens if anyone backs out. If they back out at least we've got a month's rent to cover us and hopefully we find someone else to take their place sooner rather than later.

When July 15th rolls around, we meet again and they sign the lease and pay rent and the hold fee rolls over to their security deposit.  We give them keys, do the walk through and we're done.

Every time we bring someone on board I question our process.  I always wonder if there's a better way to handle it, but in our market and with our business model this seems to work well for us so far.

I don't know where your properties are located but in Ohio, the utilities don't have to be in our name in order to setup a "switcher" account (not sure of the official name).  Basically we filled out forms with both electric and gas company that any time service is changed out of the tenant's name it automatically goes into our name and utilities are never shut off.  No deposits necessary because the service isn't in our name to begin with, just in our name if/when tenant disconnects/nonpayment, whatever.  Maybe they have that option where you are, you just need to ask.  

And FYI, it is our experience that if you call a utility company 10 times and ask the same question 10 times you will get 10 different answers, so if you don't like the first answer, call back and try again. Eventually someone will give you an answer you can live with.

We don't put granite in rentals because we can't justify the cost, but we do have granite in our home and just put granite on an outdoor kitchen counter and honestly we got a great deal on pre-fab granite counters at Menards.  Of course, this only works if you're ok with pretty standard colors and of course you have standard counter sizes, but it was a great option for us.  Our counters in our kitchen are also pre-fab, but we got them from a builder's supply place many years ago and they're out of business.  When we searched for pre-fab for outdoors, Menards was the best we found.

I know this is a fairly old post but I just wanted to post my experience with Zumper so far, and that I'm not impressed.

I created an ad two days ago and it's still not live.  They keep asking me questions trying to "verify my account".  I've gotten emails from three different contacts there, one asking me to verify my account, another asking me how great my experience was and if I have any questions and a third giving me helpful hints and tricks.

I've responded with all the info they want, they take FOREVER to get back to me (and maybe I'm impatient here, but I'm used to responses from people like this within a couple of hours, not 8-12, especially when THEY email ME) and they're ignoring my responses and asking for the same information multiple times.  So two days later my ad still isn't listed.  Thank God for Zillow who at least gets stuff listed in a timely manner.

Honestly it depends on which property we're trying to rent.  We have a 3-unit in a not so desirable area and if everything else checks out we would rent to someone without verifiable income.  We only do month-to-month leases so basically our conversation with an applicant is "if you don't pay the rent, you get thrown out in 30 days".  I honestly don't care if they can prove what they earn or not as long as they know they have to pay or they're going to get thrown out.  As long as they pay and they're good tenants otherwise I don't care where the money comes from. Garnishing these kinds of tenants in these properties is a joke, with or without verifiable income.  Most of them have next to nothing and going after what little they have is a waste of time.  Stay on top of them to be sure they're not trashing your place and put them on MTM and the minute they are late, cancel their lease and get them out.

We have higher end properties where I would never do that because they could stiff us for more money, but for the lower end ones, yeah, we'll do it.

My only concern with dancer applicants is generally the kind of people they hang around, and the potential for visitors that are unwelcome or causing trouble at the property.

Thank you, Jason, for explaining further.  

Yeah, it's tricky when stuff like that is only reported by name.  You have some reason to believe the applicant has a connection with that city so that's something.  How common is the name?  How long ago was it?

If it's a super common name (John Smith or something) then there's room for doubt, but if it's not a common name it's pretty likely your applicants, and I would send them an email saying I was turning them down due to an eviction on their record and let them try to explain it.  If it truly isn't theirs they will complain, if they lied and left it off the app and know they are caught you will never hear from them again, then you'll know!

If it was a long time ago (7 years or more) I might just ask the applicant about it and see what they say.  I can forgive an eviction from 7 years ago if the applicant was young at the time.  Stuff happens.  Depends what their rental history has been since the eviction.

We have umbrella insurance and no LLCs at all for 12 properties because we self-manage and have always heard that if you self-manage (repairs, renting, etc) that your LLC won't protect you anyway, you've pierced the veil by being personally responsible for repairs. That's what I've always heard. I have no idea how true it is.